Yes. Groq offers a Groq free tier with access to every model, no credit card required. Free accounts are rate-limited to 30 requests per minute, 6,000 tokens per minute, and 14,400 requests per day at the organization level. Upgrading to the Developer tier (free, just add a credit card) unlocks 10x higher rate limits and a 25% discount on all token costs.

How much does Groq cost per million tokens?

Groq pricing per million tokens ranges from $0.05 input / $0.08 output (Llama 3.1 8B) to $0.59 input / $0.79 output (Llama 3.3 70B). GPT-OSS 120B sits at $0.15 input / $0.60 output. The Batch API halves all rates. Prompt caching halves input costs on repeated queries. Combined, effective pricing can drop to roughly 25% of listed on-demand rates.

How does Groq pricing compare to OpenAI?

Groq is 3x to 19x cheaper than OpenAI on a per-token basis at comparable tiers. Llama 3.3 70B on Groq ($0.59 input) costs roughly 4x less than GPT-5.4 Standard ($2.50 input). The caveat: Groq runs open-source models only. For teams building multi-provider architectures, Groq handles the speed-sensitive layer while proprietary models handle complex reasoning.

Is Groq still independent after the NVIDIA deal?

The Groq company remains independent under CEO Simon Edwards, and GroqCloud continues operating without interruption. However, founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and approximately 90% of engineering staff moved to NVIDIA as part of the $20 billion deal in December 2025. At GTC 2026, NVIDIA unveiled the Groq 3 LPU chip within its Vera Rubin platform. The long-term trajectory of the standalone GroqCloud platform is uncertain. (And no, there is no public Groq stock, the company is private.)

Is Groq a threat to NVIDIA?

That framing largely reversed after December 2025. NVIDIA licensed Groq's inference technology for $20 billion — a signal that Groq's LPU architecture was valuable enough to acquire rather than compete with. The Groq 3 LPU now ships inside NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform. Whether Groq's standalone GroqCloud business remains a competitive threat to NVIDIA's broader GPU inference business is an open question, but the adversarial framing has given way to a licensing relationship.

What is Groq's Batch API and how much does it save?

The Groq Batch API processes requests asynchronously within 24 hours to seven days at 50% of on-demand rates. Llama 3.3 70B drops from $0.59/$0.79 to roughly $0.30/$0.40 per million tokens. Designed for non-latency-sensitive workloads: bulk classification, content generation, document processing, and evaluation pipelines.

Does Groq support prompt caching?

Yes. Prompt caching reduces input token costs by 50% on cache hits with no additional fee. When your application sends the same system prompt or context repeatedly, cached tokens are billed at half the standard input rate. No manual configuration beyond enabling caching in your API calls.

Can you use Groq for speech-to-text?

Groq offers Whisper V3 Large ($0.111/hr) and Whisper Large v3 Turbo ($0.04/hr) for automatic speech recognition. The Turbo model processes audio at 228x real-time speed, a 60-minute file transcribes in under 16 seconds, at roughly 89% less than OpenAI's Whisper API ($0.36/hr).

What's the difference between Groq and Grok?

Groq is an AI inference hardware company founded in 2016 that runs open-source large language models on custom LPU chips at high speed. Grok is a chatbot and AI model developed by xAI, Elon Musk's AI company. Completely different companies, products, and business models. Groq processes tokens. Grok generates hot takes.

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